


Consider If You May

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Artist!Levi, Boxer!Eren, Boxing, Eventual Smut, Every day struggle, For his daughter, He only fights for the money, Levi is extremley supportive, M/M, MMA fighting, Mikasa is a bitch, Over-working, Single Parent Eren Yeager, Slow Build, Welfare, border-line poverty, bottom!levi, not gonna lie, top!Eren
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 08:52:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11010078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Eren is a single father who has been struggling to stay afloat ever since the day that his daughter was born. After years and years of this, he finally decides that he is going to man up and find a more steady source of income.Boxing.





	Consider If You May

**Author's Note:**

> Three jobs, five hours of sleep, and little to no time for what matters most.

Privilege has always been a strange thing, to me and many others alike. While I’d like to say that privilege has always been a made-up concept created by those who think they are superior to the greater bit of humanity, I cannot say that such a thing is the truth. It’s there and it’s very much real despite what many would assume. 

Many do not stop to realize what privileges they were given at birth, rather, assigned. Some of these people are just simply ones who are blind to an idea of the sort. Others are selectively blind; a quick realization that simply obscuring a few words from your vision is the best way to ignore whatever you may feel necessary. I find that I do the latter much more than I’d ever admit in person, and I also believe that it’s not a direct solution to the method.  
It’s simply just a coping mechanism- one that is my personal favorite to use. 

 

  
My name is Eren Jaeger, and I am what many describe as a single parent. I am of the age of simply twenty-three, which is already too young to have brought another human into this world, and I haven’t been in a steady relationship since I was around nineteen-years-old. The last person who I had said, “I love you,” to, was the very woman who stranded me on an island of melancholy perpetualness with my daughter who was only nine months old; better known as Mina Schmidt Jaeger. The woman who decided to leave both me and her own kin was Mikasa Ackerman, who now I hear nothing of since _my_ daughter’s fifth birthday. 

I am disappointed to say that I do not have a job that is well-adjusted to both mine and Mina’s lives. While I’m currently juggling three at the moment and I am just barely able to scrape by for food with the aid of food-stamps, it is not a comfortable life. In addition, my choice of careers have furthermore cut my time down with my daughter to simply just an hour after my nightshift at a bar, and my morning shift from 8 AM to 2 PM as a cheap salesperson. I do have four hours after I pick Mina up from school in the evenings, most of the remaining time that I have with her is used to catch up on desperately needed sleep. 

The weekends aren’t any better. On Saturday, I have to drop Mina off at either a friend’s or the babysitter’s, and then drive into town to hope that a company will consider my job application despite no college recommendation letters or diplomas despite the one that I received from completing high school. That usually takes up the majority of my time until I have my weekend-shift at a mechanics. I’m not paid by hour, since I didn’t go to college for any type of degree, and I’m paid only one hundred and fifty dollars for both Saturday and Sunday. It isn’t a fixed, weekly schedule either. They call me when they need me to come in and I have no choice but to follow their orders. On the weekends that I don’t get called in, I go downtown and go to an underground bar that throws fights on Friday and Saturday nights and box.

I get home late Saturday night, have just barely enough time to pick up a usually sleeping Mina, before driving us both home to get as much sleep as possible before having to repeat it all the following day. I don’t make enough for all that I do, and what I make is just barely enough to keep me and Mina afloat, but it’s worth it. When I get home in the morning to see Mina, and get to have her smile and ask how my night was with that huge smile of her’s, it makes all of the pain worth it. It truly does make all of the sacrifice worth it.

I don’t ask for much from whatever higher power there is. When I do I’m not asking to win the lottery or have all of my problems disappear. I’m not asking to only have one job or have the ability to catch up on sleep every single night. All I want is for my daughter to get a good education, and an even better childhood. I want her to be able to live a normal life void of my mistakes. It isn’t her fault that she lives this terrible life. It’s mine. 

 

  
I sighed as I eyed the nearly empty cupboards just in front of me. We were almost out of food for this week, and I needed to make Mina’s lunch for today. However, it was extremely difficult to put a lunch together out of soup cans and whatever may be in the refrigerator from our last welfare check. Possibly a little bit of cheese and a bit of bread, but that wouldn’t be nearly enough for both breakfast and lunch. I could go on without food for a day or two, Mina couldn’t. 

After battling myself for almost ten minutes, simply just standing in front of a cupboard, I gave up and decided to make soup and grilled cheese for breakfast. It wasn’t necessarily the healthiest choice, but it had enough carbs to get her to lunch- which would have to be provided by the school and whatever money would be in her name from the checks I have to give the school every month. It would have to be enough. I would have to stop by the school after work today to pick up some stuff from the grocery store for dinner and whatever I decided to fix for tomorrow.

I quickly set about frying the sandwich for Mina’s breakfast and heating up the tomato soup; putting the sandwich together before dropping it onto the hot skillet- well, what could only be considered as a “skillet.” I couldn’t afford one of the expensive skillet or saute pans as many could. Plus, they didn’t even sell them around where we lived. You would have to drive into the city to buy anything like that; a forty dollar worth of gas journey that wouldn’t be worth it in the end. Instead, I used the bottom of a pot, which worked quite well despite the sides of the pot heating up to extremely hot temperatures. Whenever I used to to fry things, I would just have to be extremely careful with where I put my hands. 

After I fried the sandwich I cleaned the pot thoroughly before pouring the soup. It would take only around five minutes for the soup to heat up, which would give me enough time to wake up Mina and start putting together her bag for school. Today she had a quiz over factor families and she was practically freaking out about it last night, so I had to make sure that she had all of her folders in her backpack so she could study before her math class. If I forgot anything, I knew that I’d be driving to her school when I was supposed to be at work. 

“Mina!” I called, leaving the stovetop to walk down the hallway leading to her room, “It’s time to get up for school!” I approached the door decorated with pink and purple that we had painted last summer- along with her sketches of unicorns and family portraits of both her and me- and set about lightly knocking on the wood. Mina hated whenever someone entered a room without knocking first, and I knew better to break any of the “rules” that my little girl had decided to write on the door alongside a crooked smiley face. 

I raised my fist to knock once again, but was beaten to it by Mina throwing open her door with all of her books in hand. She had already dressed herself, which she was getting into the habit of doing, in a pair of black skinny jeans she had begged me to buy after she saw a model wear the same pair, a purple, pink and black flannel with a black undershirt, and her favorite sneakers that consisted of solid black converse. In her hair, she had decided on wearing a purple headband that was almost the same shade as the flannel’s purple.

“Good morning!” She sang out, rushing past me so she could go down the hall to put her things into her backpack. She was trying to hide something from me, and it was quite easy to spot what. 

I turned to eye her quickly leaving form and laughed, “forgetting something?”

She paused mid-step, shoulders hunching at the notion of being caught in her attempts to go to school without having to wear her glasses. Mina turned back around and offered me the slightest bit of an innocent smile; acting in some way or another that she could still get away with her scheme. 

“No?”

A sigh left my mouth and I laughed, “Honey, you have to wear your glasses.” I ducked into her room and through a pillow fort that we had constructed a few days ago of pink sheets, to her nightstand where her grey glasses case sat near a glass of water. I picked up the glasses first and then decided to take the water as well to wash the dish, as I had been searching for said cup for nearly four days now.

I heard Mina sigh at my words, but she didn’t complain any further. She knew that she had to wear them to be able to see the board during her day, but at the same time I knew that she hated wearing them because people immediately assumed that you were a “dork” if you wore glasses. If anyone should relate to that feeling, it would have to be me, since I wore glasses from pre-K all of the way up until my Junior year of highschool when my eyesight had “miraculously” gotten better.

Leaving the room and ushering my daughter into the kitchen, I handed her the case and exchanged the items for the many school books that had been in her grasp. Her backpack was on the floor right next to the table and I wasted no time in packing up her things for the day.

“Go eat, honey. I’m going to go get ready for work, okay?”

Mina nodded and pushed out a chair at the dining table; having to then climb up into it, “Okay!” She held out her hands towards me and I knew exactly what she wanted. 

I leaned down next to her and kissed her on the cheek.

“I love you, Daddy!” She smiled.

Returning the favor, I put my hand on her head and ruffled up her hair, “Love you too, ‘lil bug.”

 

  
“But sir,” I said as I held up the many diagrams that showed the company’s success within the past few weeks due to my innovative idea, “It really has improved the way that our company manages business. I mean, look at how our numbers have gone up so suddenly-”

My boss wasted no time in raising his hand to shush me and my thoughts. He snapped his fingers and the assistant standing behind his chair handed him a small stack of papers and folders. 

“Mr. Jaeger,” he started, making me swallow out of fear and almost pure desperation of wanting to just tell him to _listen to me and give my idea a chance._ No, I didn’t want to tell him to listen to my idea- I wanted to tell him to get his head out of his ass and see how much this could improve sales in such a short amount of time. “I know that you didn’t attend a proper school for education, but how would you ever come to think that this would help our company?”

Nile Dok was the bastard’s name; a lying, manipulative snake that weaved its way into every crevasse and sucked tit dry of money and emotion. He cared for nothing, and it was apparent that the fucker didn’t have a guilty conscious for all that he has done. 

“Well-” I began, but was cut of by a sharp inhale of aggravation from my employer.

“See, Eren,” he skipped formalities entirely. “You think that you have a valid opinion- or that you’re entitled to sharing it with the entire world. I could care less about this project that you have made, and it’s almost pathetic in my eyes. You had almost an entire month to work on it, and _this_ is what you decide to bring me?” He scoffed under his breath, obviously unimpressed by the hard work I had put into the assignment.

“Mr. Dok-”

He shushed me with a small wave of his hand, “Eren. I’d rather not want to listen to whatever you have to say; I’m the one with a degree and college diploma- while you have nothing. I obviously know what I’m talking about while you are not as experienced in this field.” Nile flipped through the papers his assistant had handed him and set a few onto the table. 

“That’s why I’m letting you go.”

Surprise and then anger coursed through my nerve endings. What did he mean by _letting me go?_ I was his best employee; I was the one who came up with all of the ideas to run this company- without me, he’d be nothing. I may not have attended a prestigious college after high school, but that didn’t mean I was an idiot. While I didn’t attend lectures in class, my time was mostly spent taking online classes over business management and such. 

“I want you out of your office by noon today, Mr. Jaeger.”

I clenched my fists by my sides and ground my teeth together, “Aren’t you supposed to give employees a month’s notice before firing them?” My primal instincts were calling for me to kick this guy’s teeth out. He wasn’t achieving anything by this; if anything, he was wounding himself and this company. Did he know how much this would affect my daughter’s life? With an already small income, the loss of this job would through us below the poverty line. 

Nile just _shrugged_ as a response. No, not a reasonable way of explaining his actions; he had the audacity to fucking _shrug_ off what he had done without a second of remorse coming to mind. My fists were still bruised from my last fight with someone in the underground for a bit of cash to buy Mina the jeans she had wanted a days prior, and I wouldn’t fucking hesitate to repaint my knuckles in the same shade of sickly purple.

Breathing heavily, I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose. I wasn’t thinking logically. If I decided to lash out at the fucker I would most likely wind up in prison for assault- and I would lose Mina. I couldn’t do that- no matter how much Nile was pissing me off with his illogical ways of thinking, I wouldn't act out on any of my feelings. He wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t going to lose my daughter because I lost my temper. 

 

  
“I got a hundred percent on my quiz!” Was the first thing that Mina called out to me as she jumped into the back of our car; a test with a big _100/100_ written on it in purple pen along with a smiley face.

I turned around from where I had been prepared to start the journey home and I gasped loudly, “What? Really? That’s my girl!” I smiled brightly and allowed her a few moments to bask in her grade. Of course, I had been expecting such a good grade since she was great in school, but I was happy for her nonetheless. I loved seeing her succeed in the things that she cared greatly about- and school was definitely on the list of her most prized things. 

Mina squealed out of delight and shook the paper in her hands, “I was so worried- and I did good on it!” 

“Well, of course you did good on it! You’re Mina Jaeger; the smartest girl in the entire world!” I kissed her on the forehead and ruffled her hair again before turning to start driving away from the school parking lot; not before reminding her to buckle her seatbelt. “How does celebratory ice cream sound?” Smiling into the rear view mirror, I made eye contact with her and cocked an eyebrow as if I really was asking a question and not guaranteeing it. 

She gasped loudly and gave me a look of complete and utter disbelief, “Wha- really?!” She looked extremely happy about my suggestion, but I knew that she was also questioning it greatly. We only went out to get ice cream if it was on one of our birthdays, or if it was a holiday like the Fourth of July. “But it isn’t-”

“It’s a special occasion,” I concluded with sass. “And you deserve some ice cream today. You aced your math quiz! Of course we’re going out go get something to celebrate.” I snapped my fingers to add to my whole character and Mina giggled at my attempts.

“Daddy, you’re silly,” She set her test paper down onto the seat next to her and proceeded to blow a raspberry at me in a sort of a mocking act. 

I looked at her in the rearview mirror and stuck out my tongue, loving the way that she laughed happily.

 

  
Like I promised, afterwards we went and got ice cream at a small parlor just off of the highway on the way home. I got my usual chocolate-chip mint in a waffle cone, and Mina got a triple scoop of cotton candy: her ultimate favorite flavor of ice cream on the market. It was a lot of ice cream for a small girl, but she ate like a champ and even dropped hints at perhaps getting seconds. But I knew better, since she was the slightest bit lactose intolerant and she would probably wake up later that night with a bag tummy ache if she decided to eat any more. 

We sat outside on the benches like we do whenever we decide to go, and we found a small patch of dandelions behind the drive-through lane back by a few lone trees. She had demanded that I braid a few into her hair and I knew better than to object to such a wish. So, we sat down together, her eating whatever remained of her ice cream cone, and me braiding dandelion into her long brown hair. 

Around five we left and had to drive back home so I could stop by the grocery store and then perhaps try to get a little bit of sleep before my night shift at the bar. I felt horrible for having to force Mina to leave the little grove of trees where we had sat, but I knew that if I didn’t get any rest I wouldn’t be able to safely drive home after my shift got out at three. I was already down to five hours of sleep every day, and if I had any less I wouldn’t be able to function at all the following day. 

I left for work that evening around eight; having to leave a sleeping Mina in her room with nothing but her teddy bear and a phone for emergencies. Nothing hurt more than to have to leave her by herself almost every night, but there were no babysitters open this late, and god knows I don’t have any friends that could take care of her when I was gone for so long each and every day. 

As soon as I got to work, I was greated with my extremely enthusiastic boss by the name of Hange Zoe.

“Eren!” She called excitedly, waving me over to where she was behind the bar as soon as I stepped over the threshold. “Eren, get over here! I need to show you the drink that I just made myself!” She looked way too excited for something only as minor as an alcoholic beverage. 

I ignored any negative feelings that threatened to arise and smiled fakely at her; following her command of coming forth and then listen to her for nearly half of my shift babble on and on about whatever she had made for that day’s special. That’s what made our bar different from others: all of our drinks were entirely original and not things that had been done before. That’s also why we had so many regulars; you just simply couldn’t find drinks like Hange’s creations elsewhere. 

As soon as I reached the bar, Hange grabbed a few bottles of liquor and flavorings and threw them all together in a cocktail glass, all while explaining what each ingredient did for the overall flavor of the beverage. Once she was finished, she pushed it over the bar to me.

“Tell me what you think,” She stated with a small wink. 

Before I could even allow my lips to touch the rim of the glass, a large party of college students busted through the entrance of the bar; all either laughing obnoxiously or clinging to each other with obvious signs of intoxication radiating off of them.

 

It wasn’t even two minutes into my shift, and I already knew that this was going to be a rough night.

**Author's Note:**

> Insta: @kindasassykindaclassy


End file.
